4 tips for protecting all of that employee personal information you're storing

Identity theft is a crime that can occur any time or at any place, even in a workplace. It’s a crime that affected 13.1 million people in 2013, according to Javelin Strategy and Research's 2014 Identity Fraud Report — and the numbers continue to grow.

As an employer, there are steps you can take to ensure the safety of your employee’s information in the workplace. These steps are not guaranteed to stop your employees from falling victim to identity theft, especially if they don’t take steps to protect their identity outside of work. However, they can help protect your employees’ personal information within the company.

1. Store and protect personal information

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Employees trust their employers with a lot of personal information, such as their social security number and home address, so it’s the employer’s duty to make sure this information is protected. Employers must make sure their companies have the correct storage and protection in place.

There are a variety of safety precautions an employer can take, starting with the most basic protection of locking documents containing personal information in a sturdy filing cabinet or secure location. Employers should also make sure that any employee information stored on a computer or database is password protected, so unauthorized employees cannot gain access to this information.

The final step is to make sure any servers containing employee information are encrypted so it’s more difficult for unauthorized users to access.

Julie Myhre is a NextAdvisor.com editor who covers identity theft, VoIP, virtual phone, online college, photo cards, parental controls, and people search. She has experience writing for the Silicon Valley Business Journal and as an editor of her college's daily paper. She is a graduate of San Jose State University and currently resides in the San Francisco Bay Area.